In the past, disposable moulded plastic reels have been used for this purpose, however, they have been seen to be poorly suited to the task, partly due to their lack of mechanical resistance, but mostly because of the environmental pollution problems connected with them due to the well known difficulty of disposing of plastic waste products.
For these reasons, plastic reels fell into disuse once reels exclusively constructed from pieces of metal rod arc-welded together appeared.
These metal reels have a skeleton like structure consisting of a central hub and two circular sides that hold in the wire wound around the central hub.
The hub generally takes the form of a cylindrical cage on a horizontal axis. The bars forming this cage are `U` shaped. The central sections of the bars are parallel to this axis, and the ends of the bars form a series of parallel radial spokes positioned opposite each other and welded to two rims that, together with the spokes, form the two sides of the reel.
The manufacturing process for the reels in question requires the preparation of a number of spokes, by repeatedly cutting lengths of metal rod and bending them in suitable presses, and preparing a number of rims by repeatedly cutting lengths of similar metal rod and welding the ends together once they have been bent into a ring using suitable equipment.
The assembly of the components requires the use of special welding machines that are capable of simultaneously holding and welding all the transverse spokes to the two side rims.
The scope of the present invention is that of making the manufacturing process of these metal rod reels more economical by replacing the current manufacturing method which has two distinct stages: the preparation of the single components, and their assembly.